80 Time October 21–28, 2019
back as much as a year at a four-year pub-
lic college, and nationally childcare costs
on average between $9,000 and $9,600
annually, according to the advocacy orga-
nization Child Care Aware. Many parents
spend far more. In Boston, 36-year-old
Amy Deveau will spend $21,000 this year,
a third of her salary, on day care for her
2-year-old—more than she would spend
on tuition and fees if her daughter were
enrolled at the University of Massachu-
setts. “What’s crazy is that you have 18
years to plan for your child to go to college
and put together your savings accounts
and work on loans,” Deveau says. “You
don’t have the luxury of having 18 years
to plan for day care.”
Nearly 2 million parents had to leave
work, change jobs or turn down a job offer
because of childcare obligations in 2016,
according to an analysis by the Center for
American Progress (CAP), a left-leaning
think tank. America’s rickety childcare
infra structure is a drain on parents, who
lose up to four times their salary in lifetime
earnings for every year they’re out of the
workforce, but even more of a drag on the
U.S. economy, costing it $57 billion every
year in lost earnings, productivity and rev-
enue, according to a report published in
January by ReadyNation, a nonprofit ad-
vocacy group of business executives.
The burden of childcare beleaguers
economic growth on two fronts, tamping
down the productivity of citizens as well
as pushing more of them onto taxpayer-
sponsored programs such as SNAP (for-
merly known as food stamps), WIC (ben-
efits for low-income mothers) and TANF
(welfare). Cruelly, it’s usually the more
impoverished who find it most difficult
to afford childcare and thus advance their
careers and become more prosperous, fur-
ther stymieing economic mobility. But
perhaps the most damaging punch that
unaffordable childcare is dealing to the
U.S. economy is its diminishing of future
generations. Young Americans are having
fewer children—the 2018 birth rate was
the lowest in 32 years—and according to
a survey conducted by Morning Consult
for the New York Times, the expense of
childcare is the No. 1 reason.
Yet caregivers can’t just charge less.
So confounding is the childcare econ-
omy that despite the sticker shock for par-
ents, looking after children remains a very
poorly paid job. Deborah VanderGaast,
Rachel Kahan
nurses her
daughter Michaela,
while nanny
Annie Nabbie
trims the child’s
toenails. Nabbie
immigrated
from Trinidad,
and last year
Kahan co-signed
her green-card
application; when
it was approved,
both women stood
in Kahan’s kitchen
and criedSociety